1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a sheet feeder for storing sheets on a sheet cassette to feed the sheets and to a recording apparatus having the sheet feeder.
2. Description of Related Art
A recording apparatus such as, e.g., a printer, a photocopier, or the like conventionally has been formed with a sheet feeder for feeding sheets, at which a sheet cassette for storing the sheets is formed. On the sheet feeder, sheets are fed sheet by sheet from the topmost portion of the stored sheets, with a feeding means such as, e.g., a feeding roller or the like. The sheet feeder of this type, therefore, needs to lift the sheets upward.
Although as the apparatus of this type, an apparatus has been disclosed in, such as e.g., Japanese Patent Application Publication No. JA-H6-92480, the apparatus as described in the above publication has a mechanism in which a lift plate for lifting up a cassette plate stacked with sheets is fastened to a lift shaft with a screw or screws, and in which the lift plate is rotated upon transmittance of torque to a lift gear fastened to the lift shaft to lift up the sheets stacked on the cassette plate.
With the conventional sheet feeder described above, however, the lift plate is fastened to the lift shaft with the screw or screws to render the lift plate rotate to lift up the sheets stacked on the cassette plate, and the lift gear fastened to the lift shaft is needed, so that there may raise a problem that the number of components increases and that such apparatuses tends to be larger in size.